When Everything Good Means Everything Bad
by HopelesslyHopefully
Summary: Jonathon and Deborah have been dating for months. Both are happy and in love, but what happens when all that changes? What happens when the best thing that ever happened to Jonathon was also the worst?
1. Default Chapter

The first bell rang. Jonathon looked up at the clock on the wall; it was 7:45. He unhappily shook his head. He was given the assignment to take pictures of students arriving in the morning, for the yearbook. Fifteen minutes prior, he had just finished telling his girlfriend, Deborah, that the theme for the yearbook that year was going to be "Day in the Life of...".

"Day in the Life of...?" said Deborah sarcastically. "Day in the Life of...what? Day in the Life of... government conditioned, voracious vessels of no substance?"

Jonathon stared at the stranger standing before him.

"I'm sorry...what?" Deborah laughed.

"I was a couple months behind in my 'Word a Day' calendar. I am simply trying to augment my vocabulary.", she innocently replied.

He leaned down to kiss her. He and Debs, as he endearingly called her, had been dating for several months now, several months more than his closest friends, Dino and Ben, could have ever imagined. Deborah was more than Jonathon could have asked for; she was his best friend and foreplay buddy in one. She made him what he was, and he knew that she was all he needed.

The second bell rang, and Jonathon gave up hope. He had gotten no shots worthwhile that morning, which meant that he would have to get there early again tomorrow. He shrugged and began heading in the direction of homeroom. As he turned the corner, he caught a glimpse of a girl walking out of the principle's office. She was aimlessly looking around the hall with a schedule gripped in her hands. Jonathon grabbed his camera and began taking shots of her walking down the large, empty hall. The morning sun shone through the windows creating an amazing depth, Jonathon had to take advantage of the situation. Upon hearing the click of the camera, the girl quickly turned around. Jonathon looked up from his camera. She began walking towards him. As she approached, Jonathon saw that she was a small girl, no taller than 5'3". She had shoulder length dark brown hair with short, blunt bangs. She was wearing white, low-rise slacks, a sheer yellow t-shirt with a blue spaghetti strap top underneath, and turquoise ballet flats. In her hair was a small yellow bow placed on the side. As she approached, Jonathon could tell that this girl had style.

"Hey..." she said.

"Hi, I'm sorry about the pictures...you're just really beautiful." The girl cocked an eyebrow and smiled. Jonathon quickly realized what he had said. "I mean the light through the windows was, uh, nice...that's why I said you looked beautiful, I didn't mean _you_, I meant the sun." Jonathon was incredibly flustered. Did he just say that? He felt sick. She looked at him half amused, half confused. Jonathon took a deep breath and said sternly, "You are not beautiful."

"Oh?", she said, her voice somewhat charmed by Jonathon's insanity. Jonathon looked at the floor. He screwed that up. He held his lips close together to refrain from saying something stupid...again, for a third time.

"Well, if you could pay no attention to my repulsive face for a moment, could you tell me where room 105 is?" Jonathon quickly pointed to the right, still staring at the ground, too embarrassed to look up.

"OK, thanks.", she laughed and with that she was off.

Jonathon slipped into homeroom with only 5 minutes left. The bell dismissed them for the first class of the day. Jonathon headed for math, a class that he hated. Its only redeeming quality was that his two best friends were in the class with him, which at times was not redeeming whatsoever. He sat down in the back and within seconds, Ben was sitting in the desk in front of him and Dino to the right. Dino whacked Jonathon in the arm.

"Unnecessary, man!" he complained. Dino just smiled the signature Whitman smile. Ben turned around.

"What up?" Ben asked. But before Jonathon had a chance to answer the teacher held up a stack of papers in the front of the classroom.

"Pop quiz...", she yelled. Everyone in class let out a loud groan.

The boys walked out the door of the class.

"Well, that quiz ripped me a new one.", said Dino.

"Yeah, me too, man. I totally failed.", replied Ben. Jonathon and Dino looked at each other and rolled their eyes. Ben never failed anything; it was like he was incapable of doing badly. Jonathon had also failed. Luckily, his next class was with Deborah and she would know the right thing to say to make him feel better.

The three walked down the crowded hallway, none of them paying much attention to where they were going. They had gotten into a conversation about some dating website Ben had found the night before.

"You guys...she seems like a really nice girl. You know, like, wholesome. Besides, it's not like all the people who are on that website are freaks, I'm on it.", Ben said defending himself.

"Oh yeah man, you're _the_ role model for the 'normal' population out there. It's totally normal to lose your virginity to you're teach..." as Jonathon was about to finish his sentence, he harshly collided with something and was sprawled on the floor. He looked up to see his friends laughing hysterically. Jonathon looked around him, there were books covering the floor around him. He started to pick them up, when he looked to see who he ran into.

"Camera boy...". Gathering the books along with him was the girl from that morning. He mindlessly handed her the books. They got up.

"Wow, I'm sorry." Jonathon replied. "I wasn't looking where I was going."

"Is that because you were trying to avoid looking at my hideous face?"

"I don't think you're ugly. You know, I just meant that..."

"I know.", she said, smiling. "My name is Elle.", she extended her hand. Jonathon quickly grabbed it and began rapidly shaking it. She cocked an eyebrow, surprised at the intensity of his handshake. He just stood there, continuously shaking her hand; saying nothing.

The bell rang. Elle pulled her hand away. "Maybe next time I can get your name.", she said as she walked off down the hall.

Jonathon yelled to her back, "JONATHON! THAT'S MY NAME!!!!". He saw her hand fly up and wave goodbye.

Dino tackled Jonathon. He had completely forgotten that they had been standing there. "Who was that?", he asked.

"Yeah, who was that?" repeated Ben.

"Um, I think she's a new girl", said Jonathon.

"A NEW GIRL?!?!" his friends cried.

"Aw, man...that's like the absolute hook-up; the new girl, all scared and vulnerable in a new school, then this guy like comes to save her from all those bad things. Every guy wants to hook up with the new girl, especially _that_ new girl." lectured Ben.

Dino nodded. "Looked like she was into you..." Jonathon turned towards him.

The two boys smiled deviously and walked away, leaving Jonathon standing in the hall staring in the direction Elle had disappeared to.

"Jonathon?" He quickly turned.

There stood Deborah. "I was waiting for you. You coming to class?", she asked.

"Um yeah..." he said, distracted. He shook the strange feeling that he had, and quickly ran after Deborah.


	2. Chapter 2

The bell rang. Jonathon looked up at the clock on the wall; it was 2:00. Forty-five minutes until freedom. His last class of the day was computers, an incredibly boring class, but incredibly easy all the same. The whole class was pretty much independent study, everyone just goofing around on the internet. Computer class was forty-five minutes of him going to Jonathon-land, a place of ponies, rainbows, and flying midgets...a magical, beautiful place.

He sat at his computer about to go to the dating website Ben was talking about at the beginning of the day.

"You probably wouldn't have to go to dating websites if you weren't so mean to girls that you didn't even know." Jonathon looked up; there stood the girl from the morning.

"I'm never going to live that down, huh?", he asked. She shook her head and pulled out the seat next to him and sat down.

"So Jonathon..." He was taken aback that she actually used his name. "You need a date?"

The two of them spent the whole period looking at profiles of singles looking for someone to love. They even came upon Benjamin Connor, a "bright, outgoing, youthful man looking for a sweet, independent, fun woman to share long, intense conversations about current events, philosophical icons, and comic books." The period went by incredibly fast. The world Jonathon was in now was way better than flying midgets. He found out the Elle was an "army brat" and her dad had just retired to become an author. She had traveled all over the world, and seen things that Jonathon couldn't even dream about.

"I want to be an editor of a fashion magazine when I am older, and I was in New York for Fashion Week last year, it was amazing, you would have loved it, photographers everywhere..." The bell rang cutting her off. They finished their conversation as they walked out of the class.

"Hi, smushy-butt..." The two turned around to see Deborah. She stood there smiling at them. Since Jonathon seemed paralyzed for the moment, she extended her hand. "Hi, I'm Deborah." Elle grabbed it, "Hi, I'm Elle." Jonathon snapped back to reality.

"Um, Elle this is Deborah.", he began. "Deborah is my, um..." They both looked at him. "she is my um, what's the word?" He could feel their eyes burn holes through his head. Why was he so nervous? The kind of nervous, when you had just done something wrong and were just waiting to get caught.

"Girlfriend." Deborah finished. Elle looked at Jonathon.

"Oh." Elle said. "Um, right, he's said very nice things about you.", she lied. At no point in their conversation that day did he mention his girlfriend. Before Jonathon had a chance to say anything else, Ben and Dino ran up. As soon as Elle recognized Ben as the kid from the computer, she began laughing hysterically. Jonathon smiled.

"What?" Ben asked.

"Dino." Deborah said coldly. Dino rolled his eyes.

"Hey Deb..." She was still angry about everything that happened between him and Jackie. She really just needed to get over it. He turned to the girl standing next to Jonathon. "Hi I'm Dino." He smiled. Jonathon and Ben looked at each other, they had been witness to many of Dino's classic flirting methods, and they could see this one coming from a mile away. "I apologize for my friend here, he is incapable of making introductions."

"Hi, I'm Elle." Jonathon was hoping she would walk away before Dino could finish his dialogue, but by looking at her, he could tell she was already hooked.

"In that case, Elle, I'm going to grab something to eat tonight on Saturday...around let's say dinner time. You want to come along?" Dino said smoothly.

"Like dinner on Saturday night?" Elle said.

"Seems so..." finished Dino. Elle stared at him for a second, then reached into her bag and wrote something down on a piece of paper. She handed it to him.

"Only if we can talk about current events, philosophical icons, and comic books..." Elle said as she walked away.

"Come on!" Ben screamed after her. "It's a normal thing to do! I'm not desperate...Elle, I'm not desperate!"

Dino opened up the piece of paper Elle had given him. Inside was her phone number.

"Oh, yeah!", he yelled. "Sometimes my charm amazes me..." Dino and Ben walked off leaving Jonathon and Deborah alone.

"Can you believe that?" Jonathon said. "What the hell was he thinking asking her out? She's new; he's totally taking advantage of the fact that she knows no one, well, no one except for me. That's probably it. I met her first, and so Dino tries to compensate by asking her out. I can't believe he would do that!" Deborah looked at him, curiously.

"I mean...I can't believe that he would do that to Jackie.", he said saving himself.

"Jonathon, is there something I should know?" she asked. She knew him too well, she knew something was up.

"No. Nothing.", he replied. "Nothing." He grabbed her hand and they walked out of the school. Nothing was wrong..._everything _ was wrong.


End file.
